Appellation: Vino de España.
Cuvée: O Mallada.
Colour: Red.
Grapes: Garnacha Tintorera 70%, Sumoll 30%.
About: Garnacha Tintorera is another name for Alicante Bouschet, poorly thought-of elsewhere but much loved by Nacho who shows what can be done with native grapes tended with love and care. Here blended with Sumoll, the Catalan variety much loved by the likes of Joan Ramon Escoda and brought to Galicia by a Catalan farmer.
Vines
Location: from the O Chao vineyard near Serdur, open and well aerated.
Size ha: less than 1.
Age: vines planted around 1940.
Soils: granite.
Exposition: south.
Altitude: 500m.
Training: gobelet (or vaso).
Farming: organic, by hand, leaving the soils touched as little.
Average yield hl/ha: 20.
Climate: Atlantic, cold in winter, hot in summer, likelihood of fog and humid conditions all year.
Winemaking
The harvest is de-stemmed by hand and grapes are macerated on their skins for 5 days before being very gently pressed and the wine moved to amphora and old barrels to continue to ferment and age. There the wines stay, without moving, on fine lees, until bottling un-filtered, and without any added sulfites during the whole process.
Vintage Notes 2017
Yield hl/ha: 10.
Harvested: mid September.
Bottles produced: 1,000.
Date bottled: 2018-02.
Alcohol %: 12.7.
SO2 Total: <20.
Tasting: complex, fine, fresh and bright, starts with raspberry, plum fruit then turns to peppery, earthy, forest floor, more vegetal, smokey mineral character, fine grip.
Vintage Notes 2019
Not made. As happens when you work without sulfites, sometimes things don’t work out. It didn’t.